Online Public Domain Image Archives
We are huge fans of vintage graphics and using and re-contextualising them in our own work. So we are always on the look-out for new resources and digital archives which keep on popping up more and more often thanks to the efforts of museums and libraries worldwide! In this quick guide, I’ll be sharing my top favourite online archives of public domain (and some creative commons) images, which you can use in your own work (for example, if you are into making collages or creating patterns) or even simply print out as they are and use as wall art to decorate your space!
Biodiversity Heritage Library
I am obsessed with nature, animals and vintage prints, so my top resource is the Biodiversity Heritage Library on Flickr. It is an enormous archive containing a huge number of illustrations, most of which are in a decent enough quality to be repurposed in any digital work (even for print)!
I usually use the Flickr library and just look for the source material based on the theme and the visual qualities, but if you are up for searching for something specific and looking through complete book scans, you can also explore the full catalogue on the Biodiversity Heritage Library website. It might take a while to browse books, but if you need some material on a specific topic, this is the way to go, and you can download scans of the desired pages or the whole books, if required.
The British Library Digital Archive
The British Library digital archive on Flickr is another favourite, and it’s full of copyright expired graphics of all sorts, including images of animals, plants, typography, architecture, book covers, adverts, maps and whatnot! Most of the material is sorted in albums by subject matter making it pretty easy to look for something specific, but there are also a ton of albums full of different maps.
Whilst the variety of the material is a definite plus point of this archive, the quality can be hit or miss. But if you are into different visual treatments and effects (and you can learn a range of those in our classes), these vintage images can easily be repurposed into something modern and exciting!
The Cleveland Museum of Art
We originally discovered the Cleveland Museum of Art Collection when looking for images for our The Camera’s Journey Through Time: A Brief History of Photography (available on Skillshare and on Teachable), and it has become our go-to source for any vintage photographic prints. But apart from that, this archive contains a huge number of scans and photographs of art objects (including sculpture and ceramics), all of which are available in high resolution. The catalogue also has a very decent search which allows to narrow down the results and look for specific types of art by medium, culture and style.
The New York Public Library
The New York Public Library offers another great collection of various public domain images, with a selection of high quality and cleaned up illustrations and photographs available via the NYPL channel on Unsplash and the full range of material available on the NYPL Digital Collections website.
The search filters on the website aren’t as precise as on the Cleveland Museum of Art, and you need to make sure to check the Public Domain box after every search to limit the results to the public domain images.
Images are available for download in a range of resolutions, but often to get the best quality images, it is best to download high-res TIFFs (which in some cases are uncropped images as they came from a scanner or camera).
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Met also has an open access collection of photographs and scans, with the search which is particularly good if you are after a specific medium (best combined with the keyword to narrow the search). A useful suggestion of similar images after you have opened something that you like makes it easier to get a range of images without spending ages scanning through pages of the search results. If you are after vintage cigarette cards (found under Color Lithographs) and some vintage type examples, this is a resource for you!
Other Resources to Explore
The Public Domain Review is a great resource to explore, if you are not only after the images, but also want to learn more about the context in which they were created. All posts contain links to the resources where you can download them from, which in a lot of cases will be one of the other libraries.
Bibliodyssey was my favourite resource back in the day, but it hasn’t beed added to in years. Yet, having a smaller number of albums it makes it easier to look through and it contains some images which are not super easy to find in a decent quality elsewhere.
Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel channel on Flickr includes a lot of images which you can find in other libraries listed above, but if you are after vintage images which have already been cleaned up, this is a good place to look.
Whether you want to use vintage graphics as a collage material, get inspired and use them as a reference or re-appropriate and re-contextualise them to make them into something new, or simply print something out, frame it and put it on your wall — there are plenty to explore!
Give New Life to Found Vintage Graphics With Our Online Courses:
If you are looking for ideas & techniques for using vintage graphics in your own work, don’t hesitate to check out our Source & Mix series of classes on Skillshare:
Source & Mix: Digital Collage from Vintage Encyclopaedia Illustrations
Source & Mix Botanical Illustrations with Typography to Create Trendy Designs
Source & Mix: Digital Patterns from Vintage Encyclopaedia Illustrations
If you are into creating more minimal graphic prints, be sure to check out our new course Create Minimalist Digital Collages from Vintage Graphics in Adobe Photoshop (available on Gumroad and on Skillshare), in which amongst other things you’ll learn how to add graphic treatments to found images and give them a look resembling risograph prints.
And if you want to learn to create more different graphic treatments, don’t hesitate to explore our other popular Photoshop effects classes on Skillshare:
